


King of Cups

by anirondack



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Sharing Clothes, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, transtrc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7274977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anirondack/pseuds/anirondack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“A polo shirt? Have you seen my fashion sense, Richie Rich? I wouldn’t wear a polo shirt in any gender.”</i>
</p><p>Orla comes out as a trans man. (based on <a href="http://transtrc.tumblr.com/post/145631404498/">this headcanon</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	King of Cups

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalamos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalamos/gifts).



> [kalamos](http://kalamos.tumblr.com)'s second place prize for the [transtrc](http://transtrc.tumblr.com) 100 follower fic giveaway! He requested [this headcanon](http://transtrc.tumblr.com/post/145631404498/) as a fic.

In hindsight, coming out to his family was easy. Jimi was in the kitchen making hot chocolate and Orla dropped down into a seat across from her, Jimi’s tarot deck in hand. Jimi looked at it and held out her hand, palm up. Orla gave her the deck, and Jimi shuffled it well as the milk on the stove simmered and then spread the deck out in one clean sweep across the kitchen table. Orla took a card that felt terrifying to pick up and handed it over.

“The Emperor, huh?” Jimi said. “Are you taking over the house?”

Orla shook his head, and then reached out and pulled out another card and flipped it over and laid it on the table.

“The Hermit,” Jimi mused to herself. She reached over and turned off the heat on the stove, then poured the milk into two mugs. She broke off two pieces of chocolate from a paper package and dropped them in to melt. She passed Orla one mug, along with a spoon, and Orla stared into it, stirring slowly as the chocolate chunk dissolved.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Jimi said.

Orla glanced up at her. “Why don’t you pull one?”

Jimi gave him a worried look, but did so, picking up the very last card in the deck. “King of Cups?” she asked.

Orla shrugged one shoulder and picked at his nails.

“Orla, you know how hard it is to read when you already know what’s going on,” Jimi said gently. “Use your words, not your cards.”

Orla stirred his hot chocolate a little harder than necessary, then set the spoon down. “So, I’m a boy, or something.”

Jimi stared at him for a moment, then lined all his cards up in front of him. “So you are, aren’t you,” she murmured. “So you are.” She reached across the table to brush Orla’s hair from his face and looked at him for a long moment, and then covered her mouth with her other hand as a tear slipped down one cheek.

“Mama?” Orla said, fear squeezing inside him. Jimi rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes and stroked his cheek with her fingertips.

“Your hair is getting so long,” she said. “Let’s cut it tomorrow, hey?”

Orla’s throat stuck a little, but he nodded. Jimi’s palm cupped his cheek and he leaned into it, closing his eyes. “Maybe.”

“Whatever you want, baby,” Jimi said.

“Maybe,” Orla repeated. “I’ll think about it.”

Jimi nodded, then got up from his seat and went around the table to pull Orla into a hug. Orla melted into it, holding on as tight as he could, leaving the hot chocolate forgotten.

~

Getting accustomed to having a man in the house is difficult at 300 Fox Way, but not as difficult as it might have been. Blue’s friends drag themselves through the kitchen and twist up all the energy, but when they’re around, Orla feels a little more balanced, like he’s not quite so singled out in his own home. It’s not like the days before Gansey and Lynch and Parrish and the Gray Man, when men came into the house for fifteen minutes and then paid to leave.

Jimi had asked Orla to think about coming out to the house, if or when he was ready, and Orla was ready, though he figured that everyone could tell already by the shift in energy around his room. But he had done it one morning over breakfast when the highest number of people were in the kitchen. There had been a moment of quiet while everyone processed, and then everyone had murmured their agreement. Cards and runes came out and confirmed, and Orla had gotten several hugs and kind words and then everyone had finished breakfast and rushed out to their respective jobs and classes. Orla had breathed a huge sigh of relief and then carried on with his day and painted his nails a nice turquoise to have something to do with his hands.

Orla hadn’t dreaded coming out to his family, but the idea of coming out to Blue’s friends is stressful. He spends enough time with them in his house that he wants them to know so that they don’t say the wrong things without knowing, so as they’re stealing Blue away for some other adventure, Orla pokes his head into the sitting room, makes some quick small talk with them, says, “By the way, I’m a dude,” and slips back into his room with his heart pounding. He hears muffled voices but can’t make any of them out and fumbles for his cards and pulls an image of a woman kissing a hazy skull labeled _Death_ , his deck’s surefire way of telling him to stop pulling. Orla sighs and jams the cards back into his desk drawer and flops onto his stomach on his bed and buries his face in his pillow.

Some time goes by before he sees them again. They have school and he has work and he doesn’t hide when they drop by but he doesn’t go out of his way to make himself known either. He finds himself looking a little different - his usually out of control hair is pulled back tightly so it’s only out of control in the back; his old, worn out shirts hang different on him than his usual tight tank tops. He wears shoes less frequently and moves quieter and drinks more tea than before. Jimi seems pleased that he’s staying hydrated, and that someone is going through the tea bags.

Orla catches Blue and her boys as they’re leaving to do... something, probably make some more poor decisions. Gansey looks up at him and away shyly, and Orla feels twin sparks and anger and self-consciousness. Both Lynch and Parrish glance at him and then carry on their argument about Cabeswater. Blue smiles at him and reaches over to punch his arm.

“We’re heading out now.”

“I’ll let Calla know you’ve been kidnapped again,” Orla says.

“You’re a true hero,” Blue replies, tugging on her boots. Adam gets up and heads out to the car, and Ronan chases him to try to get shotgun. Gansey stands up hesitantly, then reaches behind the couch he was sitting on and produces a brown paper shopping bag. He hands it to Orla, who takes it, eyebrows drawn.

“Blue told me that you’ve been wearing looser clothes lately,” he mumbles, looking embarrassed to be bringing it up unprompted. “And I had some shirts that I don’t wear and I know you like bright colors so I thought you might like them.”

Orla opens his mouth and reaches in the bag and pulls out a very nice, very yellow polo shirt.

“A _polo shirt?_ Have you seen my fashion sense, Richie Rich? I wouldn’t wear a _polo shirt_ in any gender.”

Gansey blushes, but Blue laughs and curls her arm around him. “Give them to Jimi, then, she can make a quilt out of them.”

Orla snorts and pulls out another shirt. This one is teal and goes with the nail polish on his toes. “Polo shirts, honestly.”

“Sorry,” Gansey says.

“He’s teasing,” Blue says. “Go on out to the car, your hooligans are probably fighting.”

Gansey turns to go, but Orla catches his shoulder. “Hey. Thanks.”

“Oh,” Gansey says, looking surprised. “Of course.”

“Good. Now get out of my house,” Orla says. Fortunately, Gansey does crack a smile at that, and he heads out too.

Blue peers in the bag. “There’s a binder in there too. I made it out of an old sports bra last night. I think you’re not supposed to wear them for very long, though.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Orla says.

“I’m just saying. I’m not pushing you around in a wheelchair when you break your ribs.”

“You couldn’t see over the wheelchair.”

Blue shoves at him and sticks his tongue out, and Orla smacks at her with the polo shirt.

“You get out of my house too.”

“It’s my house too!”

“Get.” He throws the shirt at Blue, who ducks out the door and slams it behind her. Orla goes over and picks the shirt up and stuffs it back in the bag, then carries the bag upstairs and throws it in his closet. He doesn’t think about it for a while, because there’s a phone call and he has to do three readings in a row in a low, sultry, feminine voice while people call him sweetheart, and his skin is crawling enough by the end of it that he has to go back into the closet to find the binder that Blue had mentioned. It’s a patchwork of black and navy blue, not Orla’s colors but functional, and there are obvious stitches along the sides. Orla pulls off his shirt and wiggles into the binder, which is very tight, but stretchy thanks to Blue’s old sports bra. It makes his chest surprisingly flatter. He looks at himself in the mirror and turns side to side, then pulls his hair back with an elastic so that it’s smooth on the top and puffs out behind him. All the individual parts seem like they should be uncomfortable, but together, they makes him feel a little better.

He digs a shirt out of the bag at random and looks at the label. It’s faded but well cared for, and looks like a size small, probably from Gansey’s early days of hideous fashion sense. This particular shirt is a warm, pleasant green and the collar has little buttons on the point. Orla stares at it, then pulls it over his head and rolls the sleeves up to his elbows. It’s a little loose - Gansey is wider than he is, and there’s really no getting around it - but still comfortable. It hangs from his shoulders in a good position and gives him the illusion of flat planes for a chest. Orla undoes one of the buttons at the neck, which is just high enough that the binder doesn’t peek out, and nods to himself.

He goes out later to find some leftover baked chicken for dinner. Calla’s in the kitchen with some whiskey, which has a splash of soda in it. She looks Orla up and down, then says, “You smell like old money.”

Orla shrugs a little and smiles as he goes to throw the chicken in the microwave.


End file.
